Shane and Cassie Waroff celebrate their 12-12-12 nuptials on the steps of the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. The couple met on 12-12-11 and wanted to get married on a 12-12 date.

Jenny Quezada checks her marriage application at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana on 12-12-12.

Cassie Rock, center, checks a tablet device before her marriage to Shane Waroff on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. The couple met on 12-12-11 and wanted to get married on a 12-12 date.

Dorian Larsuel, left, of Los Alamitos, joins hands with his bride, Star, on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. Star wears a lucky clover tatoo on her elbow.

Cassie Rock, right, gets photographed before her marriage to Shane Waroff on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. The couple met on 12-12-11 and wanted to get married on a 12-12 date.

Tammy Carr, left, and Daryl Kirchberg share a kiss after tying the knot on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. "When I asked her to marry me," said Kirchberg "that number just jumped in my head and it felt right."

David Rodriguez holds his new wife Lolita aloft after getting married on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana. The pair from Los Angeles wanted to tie the knot in Orange County because they heard that celebrities in the early 1900's got married here.

Throngs of couples and guests gather on the steps of the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana for their 12-12-12 nuptials.

Dorian Larsuel, left, of Los Alamitos, takes the vows with his bride, Star, on 12-12-12 at the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana.

Cassie Rock, left, waits for her wedding ceremony to Shane Waroff in the crowded hallway of the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana on 12-12-12.

Couples and guests wait to get married in the crowded hallway of the Old Orange County Courthouse in Santa Ana on 12-12-12.

Sweethearts swamped Orange County courthouses Wednesday wearing silk suspenders and Smurf T-shirts, tattoos and traditional white wedding gowns, breaking the record for most marriages performed here in a single day.

The county clerk performed 283 ceremonies, compared to 30 on a typical day, breaking the previous record of 250 that was set on 8-8-8.

The couples came with hopes that tying the knot on 12-12-12 would bring them luck, fortune, and in the case of one groom, peace from his mother back in Taiwan who has numerology issues.

Some carried roses, others carried babies.

They filled the hallways, snapped photos, held hands and shed tears.

And then they went back to work and, in the case of some of those who showed up when the doors opened at 8 a.m., back to bed.

Their reasons for choosing 12-12-12 ranged from simple superstition to complicated math.

Waiting for her ceremony in the hallway of the Old County Courthouse in Santa Ana, Kieu Nguyen explained that the number 12 is the number one plus the number two, which equals the number three. And because she has a 6-year-old daughter, her marriage to Francois Bui also makes three.

Nathaniel Sanchez also believes 12-12-12 is auspicious, but confesses it was his second choice.

He and his Santa Ana sweetheart Rosie Iraheta actually wanted to get married last Dec. 21, which would then have given them a full year of marital bliss before the Mayan Apocalypse.

Now they only have nine days as husband and wife before doomsday, but they seemed happy.

Mike Bunch said doomsday factored into his thinking too when he picked 12-12-12. He figures it will make it impossible to forget his anniversary, preventing any future marital meltdowns.

As for his Tustin girlfriend, Barbara Bardill: “She wanted to get married about 40 years ago,” he said, so any day was fine with her.

The couple picked up their license at the Old County Courthouse and then headed to Old World in Huntington Beach for a ceremony with family and friends.

Dorian Larsuel and his fiancee Star brought their friends along to the courthouse. The couple stood on the courthouse steps to exchange their vows.

Wearing suspenders and a red rose pinned to his shirt, Dorian read from a piece of paper to Star, who wore a white dress short enough to show the butterfly tattoos on her calf, promising not to “go all sideways on you,” and asking that she be his “wife and best friend for life.”

The county clerk pronounced them husband and wife and told Dorian to kiss his bride, bringing tears and applause from the small crowd that had gathered.

Star said that the date was special to her because she got into trouble when she was 12 years old on 12-12. She was grounded until Christmas, but her grandfather Bob told her that if she was good she would get what she wanted. She was good. And she got her BMX bike.

Her marriage, she said, was in his memory.

John Hsu, of Cypress, picked 12-12-12 for his mom.

Or rather, his mom picked 12-12-12 for him. All the way from Taiwan.

Not only did she want him and his fiancee Jessica Hsin, both 31, to marry on 12-12-12, but she decreed that it take place between 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.

“That would be the best time for us,” said her son, laughing along with his fiancee as they waited on a bench at 8:45 a.m. for the impending magic moment.

It was his mom’s sixth date change for the couple. She told them to marry last spring, but then at the last minute changed her mind.

Guy Huff would never have gone for all that. He didn’t even know it was 12-12-12 when he showed up with his fiancee Cindy Strong, of Santa Ana: “It’s the 12th of December,” he said. “Big deal.”

Lori Basheda is a freelance journalist who left the Orange County Register in 2014 after 18 years with the paper. Prior to that she worked at the Riverside Press-Enterprise, as well as newspapers in northern Virginia and the Philadelphia area. She has written thousands of stories over 30 years, covering everything from City Hall to courts to cops to food reviews, travel pieces and features. Several of her stories can be found on Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism website, selected as examples of exemplary narrative journalism. One story she wrote inspired readers to donate more than $500,000 to the Red Bucket horse rescue, enabling them to buy their own ranch. Basheda also won dozens of awards from the Orange County Press Club, as well as a California Newspaper Publishers Association public service award for an investigative series on nursing homes. She was a journalism instructor at California State University Dominguez Hills for 12 years until 2016 and coaches JV girls tennis at Los Alamitos High School. When she’s not writing, you can find her on the tennis courts or in the garden.

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